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times,-adorned with carving, gilding, coverlids, and cushions, all of the most costly execution and quality. With her right hand she leans tenderly upon her younger daughter, whose face is turned to her with an affectionate expression. On the other side stands the elder daughter, occupied with a female slave, who is arranging something in the back part of her hair. In other respects her dress is already finished, the hair is encircled with a double band, in the front it is fastened with long dressing-pins, whose heads alone are visible; the locks behind float in careless ringlets over the shoulders. The whole dress, with its exquisite border, the ear-rings, armlets, &c. shew that the day is that of a festival. It may be, that the scene represents a bride in the attire of her wedding-day. Near her, upon a beautiful little table, a white and blue band lies beneath a dressing-box, together with a few green leaves, probably meant for an offering-garland. At the foot of the table there stands a slender gentlycurved ewer. The whole gives us a view of a female toilette of that age and country, in which the most agreeable mixture was exhibited of Grecian taste with Roman splendour.

We hear much and often of the extravagant and costly dresses of the Roman ladies of that age, when the spoils and luxuries of a plundered world were all collected in the imperial city; when the whole earth was ruled by the proud Romans, and these by their yet prouder wives. Many of our readers, we doubt not, will consider a peep into the morning and toilette hours of a lady of that time, as likely to furnish nearly as much amusement as the perusal of a heroic romance, founded on the manners of our tilting and tournaying forefathers, or a tale of ghosts and goblins in the Radcliff taste. They may perhaps remember something of a description of this sort in the travels of Anacharsis; but there, they will recollect, they saw only the modes and fashions of the retired and domestic matrons of Athens. In Rome, things wore a quite different aspect. The most luxurious lady of an English Nabob, the most expensive Knesin of St Petersburgh, however extravagant her wishes may be, can never hope for a a moment to rival the profuse splendour which was daily commanded by the wife of one of those Roman

knights or senators, who robbed whole countries, who saw kings at their feet, who brought hundreds of slaves of every complexion from their subjugated provinces, to adininister to the pomp of their Roman insula, or their Italian villas.

A whole regiment of female slaves, each having her own particular department in the great work of the toilette or the wardrobe, attended on the nod of the Domina; for by that name was she called by her domestics, no less than by her lovers and dependants. That great painter of manners, Lucian, has given us a true and lively description of the levée of one of these ladies, which we shall begin with translating.

"Could any one see this fair creature," says Lucian, "at the moment when she awakes from her sleep, he would have no great difficulty in believing him to be in company with a monkey or baboon,-according to all authorities a bad omen to begin the day with. It is for this reason she takes especial care that no male eyes shall see her at this hour. Now she takes her seat amidst a circle of officious old hags and dainty waiting damsels, whose skill and dexterity are all zealously engaged to call from their grave the dead charms of their mistress. To wash sleep from the eyes with a basin of fresh well-water, and then set alertly and merrily about the management of household concernswhat a tasteless old-fashioned idea! No, the first concerns to be attended to are the salves, and powders, and essences, and lotions! The room has the appearance of a millinery shop. Every slave has her own department at the toilette one bears a silver washhand-basin, another a silver pot-dechambre, another a silver ewer, others hold up as many looking-glasses and boxes as the apartment will admit of; and in all these, nothing but Deceit, and Treachery, and Falsehood-in one, teeth and gums-in another, eyelashes and eyebrows, and such like trumpery. But the most, both of art and time, are devoted to the hair. Some, that have the rage for turning their natu rally black locks into white and yellow, besmear them all over with salves, and then expose them to be sucked in and burned in under the sun's rays at noontide. Others are contented to keep them as black as they are; but the

lavish the whole substance of their husbands upon them, so that the whole of Arabia breathes from the hair of one of them. Burning lotions are kept boiling on the fire to crimp and twist what nature has made smooth and sleek. The hair of one must be brought down from the head, and taught to lie close to the eyebrows, lest the Cupids, I suppose, should have too much play-ground on the forehead; but behind, the locks float over the back in bundles of vanity.'

But is it not possible that Lucian has been too hard upon the poor ladies of his age? Lucian was a great satirist, but he had so much wit, that we, for our parts, do not suspect him of having had frequent recourse to caricature. Were it necessary, however, to bring any authority in confirmation of his, we might point out abundant passages, at least as strong as the above, in the most reverend fathers of the church, particularly from the Pedagogus of Clement of Alexandria, but most of all from that invaluable mine of information, Tertullian's famous treatise on the Dress of Women. But here too, we well know that our authorities would be represented as suspicious, and the over austerity of these divines would be said to have incapacitated them from giving a just account of things as they stood. Our fair readers, however, must ascribe it to their own well-known spirit of incredulity, that we trouble them even with the threatening of such formidable citations.

Our Domina-without injury to all the other ladies, Roman and not Roman, who bore the same name, she may be called Sabina-at her first awakening is any thing but an amiable object. Perhaps Lucian's similitude of the she-baboon may not be far amiss. But you shall judge for your selves. According to the custom of her times, she had placed on her face over-night, a plaster of bread soaked in asses milk. The inventor of this embrocation, by means of which the skin was rendered very soft and white, was the illustrious Poppæa, the wife of Nero, and it had preserved her During the night, part of the beauty-plaster had been sucked ⚫ into, and part of it had dried upon, her face, so that Sabina's physiognomy re

name.

* Amores, T. ii. p. 440. ed. Wetsten.

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If we take into our consideration the fact that, in addition to all this, our Domina had laid aside, with the rest of her dress, several not unimportant items of the "human face divine," such, for example, as the eyebrows, the teeth, the hair, &c. and that therefore she probably bore much more likeness to the death's head, over which Hamlet moralized, than to the living model of the Venus of Praxiteles,-we shall, perhaps, upon the whole, be forced to admit that Lucian's comparison of the monkey was, if not the most gallant that he might have selected, the most graphic, piquant, and just. In truth, old Ennius had observed the same likeness several centuries before;

"Simia quam similis turpissima Bestia nobis."

what is, properly speaking, the dressBefore, however, Sabina comes into ing-room, her own body-damsel, the mueh-teased Smaragdis, has already performed certain little services about her these lazy lords and ladies of the world, person, the signal for which, from was a crack of the fingers.*

There is not much of caricature, after

all, in the famous question put into the mouth of a Roman lady by Juvenal-" Is

then a slave a man ?" That idea, if not expressed openly in words, was the ruling principle of much of their conduct-it was one part of this to give directions to their slaves, not by language, but by nods and gestures. The pious Clement of Alexandria, for this reason, mentions the cracking of the fingers (οι δια των δακτύλων ψοφοι, των in which slavery brought men down to the οικετων προκλητικό) as instances of the mode condition of beasts. The digitis concrepare was a common signal to the servant in waiting; but its most usual meaning was, that he or she should bring the pot-de-chamIt is thus, that in the Trimalchio of bre. Petronius we read, "Trimalchio homo lautissimus digitos concrepuit ad quos signum spado ludenti matellam supposuit." one of Martial's epigrams, we read of a Castratus, who was, it seems, skilful in this part of his vocation," delicata sciscitator

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At last she enters the dressing-room, where her arrival has been perhaps for hours expected by a regiment of slaves and attendants. Her first nod is to the slave that watches the door, (the Janitrix, as she is called,) and then she asks after the billets-doux, bills, letters, messages, milliners, &c. that have arrived before she has got up. But who might be admitted to gaze with uninitiated eyes upon such a scene as this? Sabina has read the precepts of the great master in the art of love, and she forgets not his precepts.

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moratur,

O quoties pellex culcita facta mea est."

Lib. xiv. 119. The only relic of this barbarity seems to be perceived in the after-dinner fashions of the English gentlemen. The employment of slaves, however, in such ministrations, was shocking even to the ancients. We read in Plutarch (see Laconica Apophthegmata in variis, 35. tom. i. pt. ii. p. 934, Wyttenbach,) of a young Spartan slave who killed himself from the feeling of this degradation; and a serious debate is to be found in Arrian, (i. 2. 8.) whether or no a slave should submit to it. In another passage of the same work, we hear of the emperors having a servant expressly 7 2. This abominable degradation was revived in modern France, where a court lady of high rank took her title from the Cabinet d'aisance. See Soulavie's Memoires Historiques du regne de Louis XVI., vol. IL. p. 48.

Cur mihi nota tuo caussa est candoris in ore? Claude forem thalami: quid rude prodis opus ?

Multa viros nescire decet. Pars maxima

rerum

Offendat, si non interiora tegas."

Sabina is aware what consequences the admission of any young gentleınan to this privacy might produce, and she guards effectually against it. She remembers the story of Psyche, who put love to flight by the injudicious introduction of the torch.

Scarcely has the Domina entered the numerous circle of her damsels and tire-women, ere each of them, with the zeal of rivalry, betakes her to her part. As of old, among the Egyptians, each part of the human body had its peculiar physician, so that the eardoctor, the eye-doctor, the tooth-doctor, the clyster-doctor, the foot-doctor-each had his own little unapproachable division of the general victim to deal with, as it might seem good to his fancy,-here too the surface of Sabina is portioned out among a vast variety of petty governors. Every bit of the smoothened, polished, painted, pranked body, thanks a different artist for its ornament. The slaves are arranged into troops and sub-divisions like a legion.*

The first file consists of the painters, the layers-on of white and red, the stainers of the eye-brows, and the scrubbers of the teeth. The whole materials made use of by this class, were combined under the general Greek term of Cosmetic, for the rage of the Roman ladies was in these days to call every thing by Greek names, exactly as it has been the rage of German ladies, in our own times, to call every thing by French. From the lover, down to the tooth-brush, every thing had its endearing appellation in Greek. The maids occupied with this great department were called kosmeta. The first who begins to operate is Scaphion, who, with a basin of lukewarm asses milk, washes from the face the nocturnal incrustation of bread. This mass was called καταπλασμα

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the soaps and essences which were applied after its removal, σμεγματα. To enumerate all the names of these would require a treatise, and a dull one; the ancients, so far as chemical skill was not absolutely necessary, were nowise inferior to the moderns in this species of invention. Varro, a contemporary of Cicero, calls one of these salves by which wrinkles were removed, tentipellum-humorously liking it to the stretchers used by tanners. The second slave is Phiale her care is the pallet alone, it is her's to clothe with white and red the clean washen and smoothed visage of the Domina. Before, however, she presumes to apply her colours, she breathes on a metallic mirror, and gives it to her lady, who smells the breath. The state of the saliva of the maiden is by

this ascertained-a circumstance of mighty import in the mixing of the colours.*

The ointments and colours, and the whole apparatus wherewith, as Hamlet says, they disguised God's handiwork, was contained in two caskets of ivory and crystal work, which formed, in these days, the chief ornaments of the female toilette, and were known by the Greek name, Narthekia. Our fair readers may be excused for wishing to have a glimpse of the interior of these repositories; but let our gentlemen take warning from the fate of "Peeping Tom of Coventry." We may, however, mention this much in general, that with the exception of the ancient and saturnian white lead, which was then quite as fashionable as it is now, the greater part of the ancient paints were derived from the comparatively innocent animal and vegetable kingdoms. The Roman ladies were in this respect wiser than ours.

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While Phiale is busy with her pencils and pallet, a third slave, whose nom-de-toilette is Stimmi, is getting ready a little pot with pounded black lead (which they called, very appropriately, fuligo) and water. In her other hand she has a very delicate pencil or needle, for laying on this tincture; for in those days the Greek and Roman ladies universally made use of methods for increasing the lustre and depth of their eye-lashes and eyebrows, very similar to the surmé still employed for the same purposes by the Oriental fair. The common mixture was called Stibium (a slight alteration of the Greek or, an eye-brow), and it might either be formed, as we have already described it, from lead, or from antimony or bismuth, the very materials still in fashion among the easterns. Stimmi, with her calliblepharon (for this too was another name for it, and the most elegant of all), soon transfers Sabina into some resemblance of the ox-eyed hero of Homer.* The eye-brows also are delicately touched. Next comes Mastiche to her post, the dentist of the toilette. She applies to the Domina that Chian martix from which she derives her own name, and which was the customary dentifrice of the day. From the corner of her beautiful mastix-box she next produces a little onyx phial, containing the urine of an infant, and a golden shell, containing finely pounded pumicestone, which, from the mixture of a de

* The best description of this operation is Juvenal's:

Illa supercilium madida fuligine tactum Obliquâ producita cu, pingitque trementes

Attollens oculos.

Petronius also speaks of "Supercilia proferre de pyxide." What Juvenal calls the obliqua acus is called by Galen, in speaking of the ladies of his time, (&ι οσημέραι τιμ

oμsvas yuvaines) μnan, i. e. specillum.

The word mastix itself (uasilei, maxilla, macheoire) shews how universal was this practice. The substitute of the rich, when any substitute was used, was a silver picker spina argentea. (See Petron. c. 33. p. 128.) The poor then, as they still do in the east, were obliged to employ a false species of mastich, the attractilis gummifera Linn. In old times the tree itself, however, was sedulously cultivated both in Italy and the Levant. Sonnini has several curious remarks concerning it, and the trade arising out of it. See Voyage en Grece et Turquie vol. ii. p. 126.

licate marble, sparkles with every variety of colour. But perhaps all this is mere show. The teeth which are contained in the little box of Mastiche have no real occasion for tooth powder, dentifrice, or pearl essence. These are easily placed with all their beauty in the hollow jaws, and no powder or brush can do any good to the few and ragged remnants of the aboriginal stumps. The truth is, that the invention of ivory teeth and golden sprigs is as old as the twelve tables.*

Martial often speaks in a manner which proves the universality of the use of false teeth in his times; for instance, in the following, when he introduces the tooth-powder as speaking;

Quid mecum est tibi? me Puella sumat,
Emptos non voleo polire dentes.

The goddess Fashion had in these times not only as many worshippers, but was adored by them with the same incense and morning offerings as now. To many a Sabina of that day a portrait-painter might have made the same excuse which Lord Chesterfield has

put in the mouth of Liotard, "I never copy any body's work but my own and God Almighty's."+

Let us hear the address of Martial to one of his own countrywomen: Cum sis ipsa domi mediâque ornere Suburâ Fiant absentes et tibi Galla Coma Nec dentes aliter quam Serica nocte reponas, Et jaceas centum condita pyxidibus. Nec tecum facies tua dormiat, innuis illo Quod tibi prolatum est mane, supercilio. Sixteen centuries later, La Bruyere speaks much in the same way of his countrywomen: "I have collected the voices of the men, and they were almost all of my opinion, that it is almost as odious a thing to see a woman with white lead on her face, as with false teeth in her gums, or waxen plumpers in her cheeks. They protested, that before God aud man, no part of this deceit and treachery could be laid to their charge."

Cicero de legg. ii. 24. It is forbidden to bury gold with the dead, but where an express exception is made concerning those who were buried with false teeth fastened with gold in this way.

+ The World, No 105.
Caractères, vol. i. p. 153.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRESSING-BOX OF ASTERIA, A ROMAN LADY OF THE FOURTH CENTURY, FOUND IN THE YEAR 1794.

"COULD we but see one of the rougeboxes in the Museum of Portici! Has no dressing-box been found among all their excavations? Learned men used to be buried with a copy of Homer or Cicero under their heads-did no fair and luxurious Domina ever take her toilette apparatus with her to her grave?" So we can easily imagine one of our fair readers to express herself, after perusing the first scene of our Sabina.

By a happy accident, there was discovered, some years ago, the complete toilette of a Roman lady of the first rank, in a tomb of the imperial city. It is true, that the age of this precious monument is some few centuries later than that of our Sabina; and it is also true, that our Herculanean lady can scarcely be supposed to have rivalled the magnificent equipage of the consular lady Asteria; but, nevertheless, examining that interesting relic of anwe may gain at least some light from tiquity. But first a few words on the mode of its discovery.

In the spring of 1794, some labourers digging for a well in the garden of a monastery, not far from the Saburra, at the foot of the Equiline hill, came upon a large subterranean chamber filled with crumbled ruins, from which, after some time, they succeedvariety of ancient articles of dress. At ed in extricating a chest filled with a first, however, this discovery was looked upon as so unimportant, that government, although legally entitled to all things so dug up, made over the prize, without difficulty, to the persons in whose garden it had been found. These sold the whole to a German connoisseur, the Baron von Schellersheim, then residing in Rome, who was indefatigable in picking up all antique rarities discovered during his stay; and who, upon a closer ining, that he had thus got into his posvestigation, had no difficulty in findsession one of the most precious remains of Roman antiquity which had ever been dug from the earth, both by reason of its materials and its workmanship. He shortly after shewed

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